As long as we are trading anecdotes, of the 329 people in my guild, there's only 28 that did not login this week.

I imagine you're in a very successful, active guild with a lot of very enthusiastic people, I was only using anecdotes to say that it is no indicator of player retention, not as proof of anything. Also the living story update a few days ago probably helps :P

I meant retention rate. Even WoW doesn't keep over 80%+ of everyone that buys it.

I think GW2 is the stickiest MMO I've seen since WoW in keeping players engaged. It's not close to WoW in hours played or total numbers but it is clearly the 2nd most popular MMO in the West since release and hasn't really been threatened in the ranking if you go by the numbers on XFire and Raptr. I'm sure that NCSoft and Arenanet are very happy with the numbers so far.

It says that there is 2.5 million log ins per week. Those are not unique, but the total amount of times someone logged in. I could go log in and out 5 times right now and it would count each of those 5 times towards that 2.5 million. In does not suggest that 80%+ people that bought the game still logs in at least once a week.
If true, the number seems lower than I would have thought.

What no what

What is with MMO people. Jebus.

It says active users. That means users. Not any sort of log-ins. It is 2.5 million acounts play each week, according to recent data. The 3 million units sold is from back in January. There have been more copies sold since then. It is not 2.5 million out of 3 million. It is 2.5 million out of whatever the sales total is now. We will probably hear what the current sales are around the 1 year anniversary.

I think GW2 is the stickiest MMO I've seen since WoW in keeping players engaged. It's not close to WoW in hours played or total numbers but it is clearly the 2nd most popular MMO in the West since release and hasn't really been threatened in the ranking if you go by the numbers on XFire and Raptr. I'm sure that NCSoft and Arenanet are very happy with the numbers so far.

If you go by twitch, which is what the vast majority of streamers use, including anet themselves, Anet is sitting around tera and swtor. We are talking about 300 average viewers versus 15k+ in wow, 60k+ in dota and even 5 times more in eve online. Big events like q&a (with colin) and pvp events that are advertised from anet themselves are lucky to peak the channel over 2k views. An event with ccp peaked over 20k earlier today.
Gw2 is plenty popular, but it isn't doing anything spectacular.

Raptr, Xfire and Twitch suffer heavily from self-selection bias. They only represent a specific portion of the far grander population of people who play MMOs. In other words, they mean little. Sometimes they sync up with actual numbers we sometimes get from companies, but that in no way means they represent a reliable means of population measurement.

It says active users. That means users. Not any sort of log-ins. It is 2.5 million acounts play each week, according to recent data. The 3 million units sold is from back in January. There have been more copies sold since then. It is not 2.5 million out of 3 million. It is 2.5 million out of whatever the sales total is now. We will probably hear what the current sales are around the 1 year anniversary.

I want to argue with it, but looking up MAU/DAU (Active User measurements) definitions everywhere does indeed claim that only "Unique Users" can be counted in that measurement (when using the words "Active User").

I doubted it at first simply due to the fact that I played from beta until a few months after release and I clearly saw a HUGE mass exodus from the game in that time.

So when someone says that so many people still play GW2 it's hard to believe. I looked up the other statistics and found this interesting:

According to that website their claim is true. However, it's worth noting that at one time they had nearly 9.7m views daily. So they've lost 70% of their webpage traffic but have maintained their playerbase numbers? Something still doesn't seem right to me but all we can really do is take their word for it since Active Users does mean Unique Users and we have no way to double check their playerbase numbers.

Originally Posted by Fernling306

If you go by twitch, which is what the vast majority of streamers use, including anet themselves, Anet is sitting around tera and swtor. We are talking about 300 average viewers versus 15k+ in wow, 60k+ in dota and even 5 times more in eve online. Big events like q&a (with colin) and pvp events that are advertised from anet themselves are lucky to peak the channel over 2k views. An event with ccp peaked over 20k earlier today.
Gw2 is plenty popular, but it isn't doing anything spectacular.

Most players (of the game in question) will shoot down any extrapolation like that (I still think it's silly to suggest that certain websites show bias towards certain games but that's what people say). If it doesn't support their numbers it's likely invalid.

I want to argue with it, but looking up MAU/DAU (Active User measurements) definitions everywhere does indeed claim that only "Unique Users" can be counted in that measurement (when using the words "Active User").

I doubted it at first simply due to the fact that I played from beta until a few months after release and I clearly saw a HUGE mass exodus from the game in that time.

So when someone says that so many people still play GW2 it's hard to believe. I looked up the other statistics and found this interesting:

According to that website their claim is true. However, it's worth noting that at one time they had nearly 9.7m views daily. So they've lost 70% of their webpage traffic but have maintained their playerbase numbers? Something still doesn't seem right to me but all we can really do is take their word for it since Active Users does mean Unique Users and we have no way to double check their playerbase numbers.

Most players (of the game in question) will shoot down any extrapolation like that (I still think it's silly to suggest that certain websites show bias towards certain games but that's what people say). If it doesn't support their numbers it's likely invalid.

Every game has an exodus. Many people are stuck in a MMO diaspora of their own making. Also, any youtube self-promoter will tell you that hype and anger leads to views, but once a game is out and people have it in their hands, the traffic and hits you get form that game die down. It is a natural part of things. Some of it is a bit fucked up imo. People ride hype trains without knowing anything about the game. I know people left GW2 because there was no traditional endgame. Okay.. how did you not know that? That was one of the selling points for the game. "Well it was hyped." Oy vey.

I think it's worth pointing out that the GW2 audience and GW2 itself draws from a wider perspective of people than the traditional MMOer. A game like Wildstar is targeting the WoW raider hard. GW2 doesn't do that. It casts a wider net. It attracts people who played WoW for thousands of hours and hardly touched raids or Arena PVP. It attracts people who hated WoW. It attracts console players. Since it is not the typical MMO, it doesn't just attract the typical MMOer, and trying to measure population via the "typical" means doesn't work.

A lot of players are still playing.That is only good for Anet.More gems sold,more players will come.I really can't wait for the anniversary to see how many more coppies were sold.I bet when GW2 goes into Asia it will grow even more and will sell well.
I knew the maps are not empty as some people say!!!

A) they have retained 80% of the palyer base which would be an amazing feat, but of those players they only play for 3.5mil hours/week which equates to just over one hour a week on average which would be the lowest time played in history of mmo's im sure.

Or B) They have 2.5 million log ins (not users) which, at best would mean gw2 has a million active users logging in 2.5 times a week or at worst 2.5 million active users logging in once a week.

C) 3 million visitors to the site down from 9 million. MMO champ gets more hits than that.

Either way, these numbers clearly can only been seen in a negative light the way they are presented, personally I think most of them are a load of make believe.

As to 2x a month content updates..I am so glad p2p games like wow don't try to do this, its a bit of a failure with some very poor updates IMO.

As long as we are trading anecdotes, of the 329 people in my guild, there's only 28 that did not login this week.

Let's get some anecdotes going in here! They seem pretty appropriate given that the 2.5 million active users per week figure is a little difficult to swallow. Out of a group of ten or so friends who started playing the game together, the only person to log in at all in the last month was myself. I did it once.

I find the 2.5 million active weekly players number very hard to swallow. Then again, this could be a case of clever selection criteria which Google seems quite keen on doing for Google+. Does a login equate to actively entering the world or the launcher firing up and connecting to the splash screen count as logging in?

I am effectively logged into my account when the latter happens, this isn't the case with other games such as WoW. Does an auto load of the launcher, followed by closing it, count as a log in?

As to 2x a month content updates..I am so glad p2p games like wow don't try to do this, its a bit of a failure with some very poor updates IMO.

Yeah, it's horrible when developer continues to support its b2p game after release with free updates that happen with such a frequency and even announces that they don't have to make a expansion to squeeze extra money out of players and will continue to make content available for free. Thank god developers don't do that more often. That would be horrible situation.

Because clearly the model WoW is using is much better ... I mean with a bit of luck Blizz can reach 6 mill subscribers with WoW sometime next year. That will be 3x-6x more than GW2 has if we consider these numbers to be inflated (which WoW numbers are not, those are hard facts).

Come on guys ^^ Let's be a bit more positive about this. Anet is b2p developer that seem to be doing quite well.

Yeah, it's horrible when developer continues to support its b2p game after release with free updates that happen with such a frequency and even announces that they don't have to make a expansion to squeeze extra money out of players and will continue to make content available for free. Thank god developers don't do that more often. That would be horrible situation.

Because clearly the model WoW is using is much better ... I mean with a bit of luck Blizz can reach 6 mill subscribers with WoW sometime next year. That will be 3x-6x more than GW2 has if we consider these numbers to be inflated (which WoW numbers are not, those are hard facts).

Come on guys ^^ Let's be a bit more positive about this. Anet is b2p developer that seem to be doing quite well.

The one thing that makes me suspicious of their policy of updates is that by not having them being permanent they will rehash them in the future, partly or fully. Not that this is bad in itself, but my take is wait for a full year to pass before you can be more sure about what you are seeing.

Why is everybody so sure of their "Active Users" interpretation? The site is in Chinese, and I doubt that many people in here can read Chinese. If you translated it with some tool, then that's not a reliable translation at all anyway. They're pretty inaccurate, especially if a word isn't used in a sentence.

Yeah, it's horrible when developer continues to support its b2p game after release with free updates that happen with such a frequency and even announces that they don't have to make a expansion to squeeze extra money out of players and will continue to make content available for free. Thank god developers don't do that more often. That would be horrible situation.

Because clearly the model WoW is using is much better ... I mean with a bit of luck Blizz can reach 6 mill subscribers with WoW sometime next year. That will be 3x-6x more than GW2 has if we consider these numbers to be inflated (which WoW numbers are not, those are hard facts).

Come on guys ^^ Let's be a bit more positive about this. Anet is b2p developer that seem to be doing quite well.

Its not horrible, I just prefer quality over quantity. Anet is doing well, and im playing their game, doesn't mean I can't prefer one way over another. I am by nature a pessimist.

I still watch Zam official even though I don't play wow, I imagine its just an indicator of how popular a game is in the 'gaming theater' as much as it is an indicator of active users. I also think its has a lot to do with the quality of whats on offer and what I perceive as a lack of commitment (tactics/builds etc) needed to GW2 that hampers its ability to draw in viewers.